The advancement of mobile communication devices and networks in recent years has enabled application developers and content providers to distribute content directly to the mobile device of user via content-specific software applications executed on the device. The software applications may relate to virtually any user interest or need, such as education, entertainment, finance, health, instant messaging, social networking, maps, navigation, music, news, document generation, photography, shopping, sports, travel, utilities, and/or the weather. For example, a user may select a particular application or content item for purchase and download of the item to the user's device through a virtual mobile applications store or other interface on the device. Such an interface may be provided by, for example, the wireless service provider or carrier of the mobile communication network associated with the device.
In addition to being able to offer users a content-specific application for a mobile device, an application developer or content provider is able to offer content for sale to users from within the delivery functionality of an application. The in-app purchasing capability allows developers to sell content within their apps. For example, digital content may be specific to a particular type of mobile communication application running on the mobile device and may include, for example and without limitation, electronic books (or “e-books”) in a mobile e-bookstore application, movie rentals in a mobile streaming video application, a level in a mobile video game application, and digital music or ring-tones in a music application. In this example, the digital content is purchased from execution of the application and is delivered to the mobile application from an associated application server through the mobile communication network.
Commercially available solutions exist for allowing mobile device users to make in-app purchases via a mobile application installed on the user's device and for enabling these purchases to be billed directly to the user's wireless service account managed by the carrier. However, such conventional solutions prove difficult for application developers/content providers, particularly those of e-store applications having a multitude of different items for sale, to effectively maintain the delivery of up-to-date or current content to mobile device/application users while also allowing the wireless network carrier to manage billing for the in-app purchases. In an example of an e-store application (e.g., an e-bookstore), the application developer and/or content distributor generally provides to the carrier a catalog identifying the various items (e.g., e-books) that may be purchased on an individual basis by a user. Consequently, the application developer or content provider must continuously update this catalog each time a new item (or new edition of an e-book in the e-bookstore example) is added, and provide the updated catalog to the carrier in order to ensure the user is properly charged for any particular item purchased through the mobile application.